Automation in material handling is critical for improving processes within an organization. Typically, in logistics industry where material handling is required for warehouses, automation adds time and resource efficiency in the overall process. Materials, alternatively referred as, ‘freight’ are goods transported in bulk from one place to another by any means of transport such as road, rail, sea and air. Loading and unloading of unit load in freight is by means of a fork lift. The ‘unit load’ herein refers to a unit packaged product or unit transporting structure of the freight, being lifted by the forklift. Considering large volumes of freight being loaded and unloaded, automation in freight loading and unloading is an area of research.
In an existing system manages automated cargo loading, wherein pallets are loaded onto a trailer according to a selected stacking pattern based on the presence or absence of previously loaded cargo pallets, the distribution of the weight or the cargo to be loaded within the trailer, and a delivery route so that the trailer can be unloaded in sequence with the delivery route. However, due to increasing volume of requirements loading and unloading of unit loads into cargo must result with an efficient compressed automated solution to minimize cost, time and labor.
In another existing system provides a cargo handling system including a gantry and a robotic arm. The gantry is configured to move from a retracted position to an extended position. The robot arm hangs from the gantry. The robot arm is configured to move along the gantry at least when the gantry is in the extended position. The robot arm is configured to handle one or more cargo items. A conveyor is configured to move from a retracted position to an extended position. The conveyor is configured to transport the cargo items to and/or from the robot arm. However, the robotic arm hangs from the gantry loading and unloading of unit loads in cargo limits in the weight of the robot and many conveyor equipment is supported by the floor of the semitrailer or other cargo space. Human labors have been used manually to load and unload the stack items from/within the cargo space, but such labor intensive activities can be quite expensive and can result in injury to the personnel.